


Six Crooked Highways

by theswearingkind



Series: Dylan Series [2]
Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-10
Updated: 2013-10-10
Packaged: 2017-12-28 21:29:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theswearingkind/pseuds/theswearingkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ignorance was bliss.  Knowledge is hell.  Uncertainty is worst of all.</p>
<p>Sequel to "Where Have You Been, My Blue-Eyed Son?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Six Crooked Highways

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to brokebackslash in 2006.

Your days are getting numbered, yeah  
Your years are getting few  
There’s nothing that you’re headed for  
There’s nothing left to do  
Just keep right on moving  
Keep your eyes fixed straight ahead  
Just keep your old bones moving  
Right until the day you’re dead  
Hey, sweet boy, why wander  
When the path goes keeps going on  
Hey, sweet boy, why worry  
Just keep going ‘til you’re gone

 

Two hours later and Ennis is driving north as fast as his truck will go, flying out of Childress, leaving Texas to drown in its own dust and dirt and eternal sameness. He’s been in the car for an hour and a half, but hell if he can tell it from the scenery, which is the same as it’s been since he left that godforsaken town. Never did see a place so flat.

A choked noise from the engine draws his attention, and he sees that the gas gauge is riding mighty close to empty. About fifteen minutes on he drives into Crater Dam, Texas, population 946, and turns into the only gas station he can find in the damn place, a tiny little mom-and-pop store that looks like it left its best days back in the fifties. Ennis pulls his truck up beside one of the pumps and climbs out to stretch his cramped legs. Damn. Already Ennis’s legs are screaming at him; he doesn’t know how Jack did it for all those years, fourteen hours each way.

The thought of Jack is like a shard of glass buried in his eye, or a rough-edged blade stuck right through his gut. He can’t think about it, won’t think about it, and God, nothing has ever hurt this much in his life, not even walking away that first summer, nose bloody and heart beating raw in his chest. Then he thought it was the end, that he might never see Jack Twist again, and even though that nearly killed him, it was nothing compared to this.

A red-faced boy with a shock of white blonde hair approaches him. “What you want, mister?” he asks, only his damn accent is so strong that it sounds to Ennis like, “Wachoo woa-unt, mista?” Ennis has half a mind to tell him that what he *wants* is to hear just one word spoken without a southern accent attached to it, that he could never hear a goddamn southern accent again and he’d be just fine, but since his own English isn’t exactly college-level, he leaves off. “Fill ‘er up,” he mumbles as he walks toward the store.

It isn’t much, but there’s a heater and a glass case full of sodas and beers, some girlie magazines in rack by the window, and a row or two of snack foods—peanuts, chips, and the like. Ennis looks hard at the beer, but it’s still thirteen hours to Wyoming, so he grabs two Coca-Colas and a pack of peanuts and heads to the counter.

“That all for ya?” asks the man behind the counter, smiling, so friendly-looking that Ennis wants to knock his teeth out.

“Got the gas, too,” he mumbles, eyes on the cracked surface of the counter.

“Alright, son. Be just a minute ‘til he finishes up. Why don’t I go on and ring those up for ya?” His yellowed teeth won’t quit grinning at Ennis, who shoves him the food while mentally commanding him to shut his damn mouth.

“Ya from around here?” he asks as he drops Ennis’s purchases into a bag. “Don’t hardly recognize ya, an’ I know most everybody lives in these parts.”

“Naw,” Ennis answers.

The man nods. “Didn’t think so. Ya ain’t with them other two, are ya?” Ennis just stares at him blankly, so he keeps going. “Them other two fellas, they came through here ‘bout a week ago, talkin’ a mile a minute ‘bout fishin’ and the like. Looked like they was ‘bout to piss their pants, they was so fired up.”

It ain’t possible, Ennis thinks. No fuckin’ way.

“...son? Ya alright?” The man is looking at him with naked worry on his ugly face. “Ya went away there for a minute, just plain out your head, like ya was off in Mexico or some such place.”

“I’m fine,” he finally mutters, the words sour beer in his mouth.

“Jesus, son, give a man a heart attack, why don’t ya? Answer quicker next time, for Chrissakes. Thought ya had had a stroke or somethin’, even if ya is a mite young for it. Way ya was standin’ there...”

He obviously expects an apology, but Ennis has nothing to say. Instead, he stares out the smudged glass door at the boy gassing up his truck. He’s taking his sweet time about it, too, no rushing for this customer, this rough-edged old cowboy who clearly doesn’t have two spare pennies to rub together. No hurry.

“Say, son, ya didn’t answer my question. Ya with them two fellas?”

Ennis’s gaze swerves back to the man behind the counter. “What’s your name?”

He looks surprised, but he answers anyway. “Earl.”

“Earl, I’m Ennis. There. Now we know each other, how ‘bout you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“Mind your own goddamn business.”

The man’s pale face floods with anger, flushing crimson as red dawn. “Now, see here—-” He falters under Ennis’s coal-eyed stare, but recovers quick enough. “This is my store, and I don’t gotta stand for that sort of talk in it. Ya wanna talk filth, then pay, get out, and wait in the cold.”

“Be glad to,” Ennis snarls, grabbing his purchases, throwing some money on the counter, and storming out the door. The expression on his face must show at least some of what he’s feeling, because the little shit-for-brains outside takes one look at him and finishes his truck up in record time, even wiping down the windshield for good measure.

“Uh...that’ll be fourteen dollars and fifty cents, sir,” the boy stammers out. Ennis pulls a crumpled wad of bills from his pocket, sees that a ten and a five are mixed up in there, stuffs them in the boy’s hand, and watches in satisfaction as the kid practically leaps inside the store.

The engine starts smoothly, purring like a kitten with a bowl of milk, and all Ennis wants to do is get the hell out of Texas, get back to a place he knows. Place he can get his bearings in.

Ten miles down the road, what ol’ Earl said creeps back into his head. Ya ain’t with them two other fellas?

It ain’t possible, it just can't be, and that’s all there is to it. Ain’t no way. Lots of people goin’ fishin’ this time of year, Ennis. Don’t think on it. Ain’t him. It ain’t—-it ain’t them. Don’t you think on it none.

And he doesn’t, he turns on the radio and picks up a fuzzy country music station—-don’t they play anything else down here?—-and listens for almost an hour to some two-bit guitar picker sing about trains out of Tennessee and drinking in the rain, not particularly good music, but something to fill the miles stretching out in front of him like paths his life could have taken. He thinks they’d lead him to the same place, if it came down to it; he’s been heading there all his life.

About fifteen minutes over the Colorado line, the nagging bear in the pit of his gut jumps up and bites hold of his nerves, and it hits him: Mexico. That’s the place.

Mexico. Know what they got in Mexico, what they got down there for—-

He don’t need Mexico no more, Ennis.

Jack. Christ.

Ennis remembers that black day, walking away from Jack, his back to everything he’d never known he always wanted, the scrape of his heart against his ribcage, a wild smoky haze he couldn’t claw his way out of, that empty stretch of years that didn’t hold anything for him, already a shell of a man at nineteen. He thought that it was the end.

God, this pain.

It isn’t the end. He knows that he’ll see Jack again, but it’ll be a Jack that doesn’t belong to him, a Jack that found a way to fill those blank spaces on the map, and that almost hurts more than walking away and never looking back.


End file.
